Note: This happened last August – everything is back in working order.

Just before I struck the car ahead of me on I-95, I thought to myself, “What the hell, this won’t really happen.”  In the same instant, some other more primitive part of my brain was doing what it needed to do prevent it from happening.  I slammed on the breaks.  It happened.  Like dropping a stick of warm butter on the floor, the front of my car smooshed up.  I don’t even remember it making a noise, just seeing where part of my car had been was now occupied by the back corner of a Subaru Outback.  I sat frozen in my seat for what must have been a few seconds.  That initial part of my brain that thought it won’t was quickly coming to grips that it had.  Happened.

It seemed like a long eternity that I pondered this odd situation (odd only because it had never happened to me before), but I was briefly plunged into a whole new reality as I suddenly felt the sledgehammer jolt of another car rear-end me.  Without looking in my rearview mirror, I froze, waiting for yet another impact.  It never came.

Once I returned to the moment, I decided that I should find my phone in the explosion of coins and various bits of small debris that had been already loosely scattered about my car that were now thoroughly dispensed as if shot from a confetti gun.  I found it, dialed 911, and found myself asking the operator to repeat, “What is your emergency?”  What?  The second time through, my brain clicked in and responded appropriately.  Turns out, she knew exactly where I was and asked me if a trooper was pulling up behind me.  For the first time, I looked in my mirror, and sure enough I could see blue lights.  Hanging up the phone, my next thought was the horrific blood and bodily injuries that surely awaited me in the other two cars.  It seemed we all had opened our doors and gotten out on the median at the same time, with no injuries.  It was at this point that I leaned against the guard rail, and let the officer do his thing.

As I sat there, feeling the hot sun on this otherwise mild day, I pondered two things: physics and rubbernecking.  In that order.

Surveying the damage to the three vehicles, it struck me (haha) that cars are designed very intentionally.  This didn’t really surprise me, exactly, but I suppose I had never really thought about how a car would behave in a situation such as this.  The Hollywood versions of car crashes really don’t do much justice to physics and design at all.  In order to understand more about the physics, I have to explain a bit more about the crash.

I was driving in moderate traffic in the far left of three lanes headed northbound.  I missed the specific details of what happened to initially cause the accident, but I remember suddenly realizing that there were two cars attempting to share the lane ahead of me (what I assume happened was the car on the right tried to merge into the left lane not seeing there was already a car there – needless to say, the merging car escaped unscathed and did not stop).  The car on the left swerved over, only to hit the guardrail, which was placed close to the lane itself.  I assume that the experience of contacting the guardrail was enough to make the driver of this car (the Outback) consider that she had “crashed” and thus execute a full stop on the highway.  While I can’t argue this was a bad instinctive move, it had obvious consequences.

Since the Outback was already on the far left edge of the highway and with a steady stream of cars in the center lane, something in my head decided that it was a far better move to collide with the Outback than to try to swerve around her and risk hitting either the side of her car or a car in the center lane.  I take a lot of pride in doing my best to be aware of cars and space around me while I’m driving, and I assume that aided my decision to stay where I was instead of avoiding the immediate obstacle.

Initially, when I realized that the Outback had begun a rapid deceleration, I slammed my foot on my break.  This is where the physics bit comes in.  A few things happened that I must note.  The car did not swerve at all, despite the fact that I went from an estimated 65 mph to 0 mph in a matter of a hundred feet or so.  I was conscious of my tires squealing below me, but I felt very much in control of the car.  Perhaps had I attempted to execute a turn to avoid the Outback, it could have meant a very different, and probably more dangerous result.

The second thing that happened was that the impact of the cars was so easy, meaning that I did not hear any horrible sound, the condition of the front of my car was not drastically altered, there were no bloodcurdling screams, or any other horrifying and emotionally scarring occurrences.  I assume that the impact itself was not as bad as it could have been largely because by the time the two vehicles struck, we were both going approximately the same speed.  I remember from my high school physics class such questions like:

• If you throw a marble from a car going 60 mph, how fast is it initially going and what is its rate of deceleration?
• If you’re standing in the aisle of a bus that’s going 60 mph and you jump up in the air, why don’t you splat into the back of the bus as it moves forward underneath you?

I realized that the crash could have been much more severe had we had different relative speeds.

The third thing that struck me as curious was that the impact of the third car, which hit me square in the rear, felt much more severe than the impact of my car hitting the Outback.  Was this because of relative speed?  Was it because there were different forces on my body?  Did it have to do with the element of knowing I would hit the Outback versus being surprised when I was subsequently rear-ended?

Finally, leaning on that guardrail, observing the scene, I noticed that the third car (some type of American gas-guzzling luxury sedan, Pontiac perhaps?) had suffered the most significant damage.  Its entire front end was totaled, while the back of my car suffered only cosmetic scrapes and chipped paint.  Observing the twisted folded metal mass of the front of the third car, I suddenly realized what a “crumple zone” is.  Indeed, the front of my car also had “crumpled” while the rear of the Outback suffered only cosmetic damage.  This gave me a profound appreciation for the concept of intentionally “crumpling” a car, as well as for the herculean strength of a rear bumper.

It wasn’t until later, when I reached my dad’s place, that the final oddity dawned on me.  He seemed genuinely surprised that my airbag did not go off from either the first or second impacts.  I, too, found it strange, upon reflection, but realized that there is likely a connection between the airbags not deploying and my ability to walk away so easily from this incident.

On the topic of rubbernecking, a phenomenon that annoys me immensely when I’m stuck in traffic myself, it was illuminating to see how mesmerized people are by the misfortune of others.  Somewhat appropriately, I had just finished listening to the Avenue Q song, “Schadenfreude.”  Of course, for other Northbound travelers who were reduced from three to two lanes suddenly, it made sense that traffic had slowed.  But it was the Southbound drivers who were most remarkable to me.  That they had slowed to nearly the same crawling speed as drivers on my side of the median revealed to me a profound, yet, with all its implications, disturbing insight into human psychology.

As is usually the case in the rare extreme (or absurd) situations, I intellectualized nearly everything I experienced.  Though some may fault me for this, it allowed me to be level-headed in responding respectfully to the others involved in the incident, even comforting the driver of the Outback who was apologizing profusely for her part.  I spent the remaining hours of the day replaying the accident in my head over and over, marveling, wincing, second-guessing, and feeling grateful, sometimes all at once.

This past spring, a student from the school where I work took the turn out of the school driveway too sharply and hit a telephone pole.  I was the first on the scene and walked him through the steps he needed to take.  I remarked later to other adults that it was the “perfect accident” – he wasn’t injured and no one else was involved in the accident and he was around adults whom he knew and who could help him.  Considering that so many highway car accidents I see involve stretchers, fire trucks, overturned cars, and mangled guardrails, I suppose as far as everything is concerned, this was a “pretty good” accident.